Blog Archives

This blog about a controversial advertising campaign was one of my most successful.

Did you start to think about how you are going to market your money making venture yesterday? Did you consider blogging? Today we’re going to think whether a blog would be useful to you.

Why blog?

If you need to be online but don’t have the budget for a purpose designed website then a blog might be the answer. You can run a website and blog for very little or even no money. A blog is particularly useful if you need to demonstrate your expertise and reach out to a global market.

A blog will allow you to build a following and track where your visitors are coming from and what they are reading. You can promote engagement with your prospects by encouraging comments and polls as well as integrating your posts with other social media channels. To be most effective you will need to post articles on a regular basis and keep on subject.

Successful blogging

There are millions of blogs online which makes it really difficult to get your voice heard. However there are a number of things that you can do to improve your chances:

be really clear about the audience you are writing for (this should be the same as your target customer)

be consistent in what you write about, e.g. if you are wanting to recruit people to your diet programme write about healthy food, if you are raising money for charity write about the work of the charity and the problems they are solving

be regular, commit to posting on a regular basis to build your readership. Try to post at least once a week, twice is even better but if you can’t manage that write at least one post per month

develop your voice, let your personality shine through. People buy people, not everyone will like you but that’s OK. If you’re too bland you’ll win few readers. Don’t be afraid to be controversial or to write about controversial subjects. I always get more engagement on my blog when I write about a topic where people have strong opinions.

use other social media to drive traffic to your blog

comment on other people’s blogs from your blog account, choose people whose audience is similar to yours

Setting up your blog

In most polls WordPress emerges as the clear winner of the most popular blog host contest but some swear by Blogger, others like Posterous and Tumblr is growing in popularity particularly for blogs with high visual content. My personal favourite is WordPress which is easy to use, integrates well with You Tube for uploading video and gives great insights into where visitors are coming from and what they are reading.

If you haven’t set up a blog before this video might help to get you going on WordPress.

ACTION: Think whether a blog would be useful as part of your promotional strategy and if the answer is yes, set up your blog. Write your first article and share it in the comments here and in our Facebook group. We’ll share the links and promote your blog on Twitter too.

Next steps, should you choose to take them…

Share any insights or recommendations in the comments section here.

Join the conversation on Facebook to gain support from the 21 Day Challenge community (we’ll be looking at some of the benefits of social media later in the challenge but for now being active on this page and on Facebook can help boost the way people can find you on the Internet.)